The NYT reported this morning that at the COP28 Summit, diplomats from nearly 200 countries including the U.S. agreed not just to "accelerate a global shift away from fossil fuels this decade" but also "to quit adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by midcentury."

That's evidently an 'aspirational goal.' Even so, because you can't run an internal combustion engine without generating C02, the success of that effort would mean our bikes will be nothing but overweight museum pieces by 2050 or a few years later.

I'll be 90 in 2050, so perhaps just about ready to stop kicking over a 74 CID motorcycle engine. But it does make "A Man of Cars," a screenplay I wrote about the public's reaction to a federal statute designed to force the obsolescence of internal combustion engines, seem a whole lot less far-fetched.

Anyway, in the meantime, I'll be kicking her over every chance I get!

 

Heard yesterday, don’t recall the source but it was trucking industry point guy, that said effective 1 January 24, in California, no more non battery trucks can be added to fleets for drayage from the ports.

Must be registered for port pickup by 31 December to be grandfathered for use.

Also, can’t register new trucks, limitations on what can be registered for future use. Basically used trucks with minimum set of miles and some other nonsense.

As someone always posts, clown world.

 

I think you are missing the point of the agreement. Nobody is taking away our IC vehicles. Repeat, nobody is taking away our IC vehicles. Carbon Neutral by 2050 is not the same as banning all fossil fuels in 2050. In fact, they specifically avoided recommending a complete phase out of fossil fuels.

 

how does this relate to panheads?

 

Let me back up a bit, because I don't think we actually disagree re: government coming after the vehicles themselves.

My story involved a fictional federal statute, the ICE VOA, or Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle Obsolescence Act, which tried to get around the specter of a bazillion law suits for de facto government takings of citizens' ICE vehicles by outlawing the sale of only internal engine parts as of [x] date. Our hero, an ex-drag racer and owner of a bone yard, was skirting the law to try and help folks who couldn't afford (or didn't want) electric vehicles keep their ICE cars and trucks running, so the FBI and DOJ came after him (and his son) for multiple felonies... and the chase was on. A suspense thriller posing the question of whether government should impose its will on the voting public because it knows better than they do what's good for them.

In my view, those attendees at COP28 who are concerned with global warming were trying basically the same thing on a global scale by pushing to phase out fossil fuels by a date certain--and the petroleum industry's reps, who far outnumbered the environmental lobby, pushed back hard and essentially won the day by producing only the aspirational, non-binding goal of 'transitioning away from' fossil fuels by a date not certain.

But to your point on ICE vehicles more specifically: as a former, longtime environmental hearing officer or ALJ (administrative law judge), many of the cases I presided over were permitting matters, where residents would weigh in or file suit over a proposed facility's construction or modification (usually, expansion) near their homes, schools, etc. Invariably, you'd get broader criticisms, too (typically by facility owners bucking advanced filtering requirements, etc.), of the technology-driven approach adopted by CARB, which in turn drives the EPA's 48-state efforts to force automotive manufacturers to improve the efficiency of their fleets.

If you compare a Detroit V8 of the '60s to a fuel-injected, computer-managed version today, it's hard to argue that this approach hasn't produced more efficient engines, because it has. But in my view, that's a far cry from applying the same approach to an entire economy, and indeed a civil society writ large that has developed over the course of more than a century. That's kind of like forcing my former college students to compress a 10-page term paper onto a single page. You'll get a more or less coherent summary of their idea, but next to nothing in the way of an earnest attempt to identify and grapple with the countless, intractable problems of just how their nifty idea is actually going to play out in people's daily lives.

Is the government going to take away citizens' ICE vehicles? Not bloody likely, for the reason I stated: it'd get sued for uncompensated government takings, and in my experience as a federal litigator and appellate lawyer, it'd lose (especially with this Supreme Court).

But phasing out fossil fuels, and effectively forcing a cascade of crises that local governments and private industry must solve, is precisely how a national government would eliminate ICE vehicles without going after them per se. Will it ever actually happen? That's the question of the day...

 

Try running a Panhead without gasoline.

 

Joe,

I guess the one thing I'd add on a hopeful note is that, if the transportation sector can indeed be successfully shifted to electrics, then presumably there'd be plenty of room in the planet's C02 budget for out hobby bikes to continue putting around...

Joel

 

I'll only be 103. Still plan on running my Pans. ***** 'em all!

 

Reading the NYT will damage your brain..

 

Treating Co2 as a threat is ridiculous. All plant life absorbs it to grow and produce fruit and grains. Those plants emit oxygen in return. These globalist tyrants demanding decreases to "zero" are condemning people and all wildlife to extinction. Every human exhalation contains the evil CO2. Should we all die in the fight against (natural, cyclic) global warming?
Just say no to communists. Let's choose to live and enjoy our lives. Condemn the WEF, UN, World Bank, COP28 and any politicians that call for our deaths. How about that?